The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Johnny Depp, Chump?

Posted on | May 30, 2016 | 77 Comments

“I’m a lucky man.”
— Johnny Depp, November 2014

“Johnny Depp got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a–hole.”
— Doug Stanhope, May 2016

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”
— Benjamin Franklin

The Giant Wheel o’ Karma turned against Johnny Depp last week when his wife Amber Heard filed for divorce and then filed for a restraining order, accusing Depp of domestic abuse. Anyone who was surprised by this simply hasn’t been paying attention to the many omens of doom surrounding their relationship. Most obviously, Depp was 49 when he dumped the mother of his two children (French actress Vanessa Paradis, whom he had been with for 14 years) to be with Heard, who was then 26. A move like that is nearly always a mistake. If you can’t make a relationship work with the mother of your children, what makes you think you’re going to have better luck with a woman half your age?

Oh, sure, Depp and Paradis had “grown apart,” their relationship was “on the rocks,” yadda yadda yadda, but if any middle-aged man honestly thinks that the solution to such a problem is to hook up with a 20-something, he should probably consult a psychiatrist.

So, what do we know about Little Miss Homewrecker, Amber Heard?

Heard, who was raised Catholic, subsequently declared herself an atheist after being introduced to the works of Ayn Rand by her then-boyfriend. She has said of Rand, “I’ve read all of her books. Ever since then, I have been obsessed with her ideals. All I’ve ever needed is myself.”

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

Look, I loved Atlas Shrugged as an attack on the liberal welfare-state mentality of the New Deal, but when it reaches the point where Rand rolls out her Nietzsche-influenced anti-Christian philosophy? No, thanks.

The ugly denouement of Rand’s personal life — her affair with Nathaniel Branden, a leader of the weird cult following around Objectivism — was sufficient proof that, whatever else you say about free-market idealism, it is no substitute for sexual morality. If you’re a middle-aged movie star looking for thrills, I suppose hooking up with a young Objectivist could be fun, but marry her? Whoa. Slow your roll, homeslice.

Another thing: Watch out for lapsed Catholics. Hitler was a lapsed Catholic. Yeah, backslid Baptists and apostate Pentecostals have been known to go off the deep end, but when Catholics go bad, they’re likely to go all the way to pure evil. Prostitution, witchcraft, human sacrifice, voting Democrat — there’s no limit to their wickedness.

OK, nice Catholic girl from Texas hooks up with boyfriend who gets her reading Ayn Rand, she becomes an atheist, moves to Hollywood and . . .

 

Actress Amber Heard comes out
as a lesbian at GLAAD event
. . . The 24-year-old stepped out on Friday night for the GLAAD 25th anniversary bash with girlfriend Tasya van Ree. . . .
‘Injustice can never be stood for. It always must be fought against and I just was sick of it being a problem.
And she explained how, by hiding her sexual identity, she felt she was admitting it was a bad thing to be gay.
She says: ‘I personally think that if you deny something or if you hide something, you’re inadvertently admitting it’s wrong.’

Oh, but no labels, please:

“It’s been frustrating as I don’t label myself one way or another — I have had successful relationships with men and now a woman. I love who I love, it’s the person that matters.”

It depends on how you define “successful relationships,” I guess. Maybe her ex-boyfriends would define “successful” differently, but no one’s interviewing them to find out their opinions of Ms. Heard. As for her relationship with Tasya van Ree, who is 10 years older than Ms. Heard, let’s ask: What’s up with this “no labels” idea? Sure, I’ve got a copy of Lisa Diamond’s Sexual Fluidity on my bookshelf, so I’m familiar with this phenomenon at the conceptual level, but in terms of day-to-day life, it makes no sense whatsoever. A person who is either heterosexual or homosexual can narrow the choices down to 50% of the human race, at least, whereas a polymorphous “no labels” sexuality . . .

Well, wouldn’t that be kind of emotionally exhausting after a while? “Maybe I like this . . . No, wait, probably I like that a little better.”

Three words: Borderline personality disorder.

It was my lesbian friend Cynthia Yockey who pointed out the substantial overlap between bisexuality and borderline personality disorder. People with BPD notoriously have “boundary issues.” They can’t stand to be told “no,” and don’t think the rules should apply to them. They love to cause drama, and would rather have negative attention than to be ignored. BPD is “characterized by extreme fear of abandonment; unstable relationships with other people, sense of self, or emotions; feelings of emptiness; frequent dangerous behavior; and self-harm.”

Does that fit Amber Heard? I’m not qualified to offer a clinical diagnosis, but her “no labels” attitude struck me as symptomatic, and it seems as if the “unstable relationships” factor was evident in her marriage to Johnny Depp. There are reports that Ms. Heard never fully let go of her relationship with Tasya van Ree, and that this created problems.

Depp’s friend Doug Stanhope says he never liked Ms. Heard, and accuses her of blackmailing Depp. We cannot know the whole truth of two people’s private relationship, so I’ll reserve judgment as to the details, but let me say this in general: I don’t trust bisexuals.

This wasn’t something I’d spent much time thinking about until I started studying radical feminism, which necessarily requires paying attention to lesbian feminism, and issues surrounding women’s sexuality in general. Once I started examining the Feminist Tumblr phenomenon, I encountered a seemingly interminable war over the boundary between lesbians and bisexual women — and the bisexuals were clearly the aggressors in that conflict. However, in a strange reversal of reality, bisexual women depicted lesbians as the villains in the conflict, asserting that it was “extremist” or “bigoted” for lesbians to exclude from their lives the possibility of relationships with (or attraction to) males.

Now, I can’t say how much this Tumblr quarrel reflects any real-life conflict inside the LGBT coalition, but it did make me think about why (some) guys are so absurdly enthusiastic about the idea of bisexual women, viewing them in terms of a porn-inspired fantasy of threesomes. This kind of fetishistic obsession is unhealthy, to say the least, and pursuing such fantasies can have disastrous consequences.

About 25 or 30 years ago, there were plenty of married guys who thought “swinging” (or polyamory, as it is nowadays called) was an excellent way to “spice up” their sex lives, and they would cajole their reluctant wives into trying it. These guys were typically eager to get their wives to replicate the “hot” girl-on-girl scenes that were so common in porn videos. And, having overcome their initial reluctance, some of these wives discovered they liked other women much better than they liked their porn-addicted weirdo husbands, leading to divorce. Oops.

Once you’ve heard a few sad tales like that, you tend to develop a dim view of the misguided notion that living out one’s wildest fantasies is necessary to self-fulfillment. “Lead us not into temptation,” see?

This brings me back around to my distrust of bisexuals, because here’s the thing: If lesbians don’t trust bisexual women, why should men?

Within the lesbian community, the negative stereotype of bisexual women is that they always end up going back to men. Is that true? Should this be celebrated as a triumph of the heteropatriarchy? I’m not sure. Bisexuality is quite trendy nowadays, and my hunch is that this trend bodes ill for the future because, despite the tendency to disparage bisexuality as “just a phase” or “they’re just doing it for attention,” such women are likely to have difficulty forming durable monogamous relationships. Of course, you’d need a lot of research studies to be able to demonstrate such a correlation in terms of social science, but old-fashioned common sense and anecdotal evidence suggests that the man who thinks it’s a smart idea to marry a bisexual woman may be bitterly disappointed by the result.

Johnny Depp probably wasn’t thinking in terms of statistical probability when he hooked up with Amber Heard. He was a middle-aged guy and she was a 26-year-old blonde — no, a guy in that situation doesn’t calculate the odds rationally. “Thinking with the wrong organ,” as they say, and maybe Amber Heard wasn’t shrewd and cunning, but just emotionally unstable, but either way, Johnny Depp got played for a chump.

Pay attention to those warning signs, guys.
‘

 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

77 Responses to “Johnny Depp, Chump?”

  1. Harvey Adams
    May 31st, 2016 @ 2:48 pm

    I know that Hollywood is filled with a bunch of PC basket cases, but scoring points is not what drive Heard. It’s simply about “showing [her] the money.”

    Simple legal posturing for a fat payoff. No political agenda, just financial security.

  2. Harvey Adams
    May 31st, 2016 @ 2:49 pm

    and a broken clock is right twice a day.

  3. Harvey Adams
    May 31st, 2016 @ 2:51 pm

    There are many men AND women who disagree with you on that. She’s smoking and, if she were to do porn, would easily be one of the 10 most popular pornstar out there.

  4. Harvey Adams
    May 31st, 2016 @ 2:53 pm

    I though his talent was playing very strange characters in a way to make them accessible. Tonto, Hunter Thompson, Edward Scissorhand, Willy Wonka (ok that one is kinda creepy)

  5. jolly green
    May 31st, 2016 @ 3:44 pm

    You’re not a man, bro. It wouldn’t matter how you phrased it, rither. You’re a teenager that’s confused about his own sexuality, and giving a bad performance about how you think men are supposed to act. Apparently decent male role models were in short supply in your life, and you’ve been raised by peers. Probably won’t be long until you wind up in jail and guilty of sexual assault. Any guy that uses social media, or reads about culture and politics knows what a PUA is, putz. And yes, you’re a creep, and a douchebag, and that’s why you need PUA courses, loser. If you think only women use that language then you spend more time in your basement playing with yourself than I originally thought.

  6. Durasim
    May 31st, 2016 @ 3:46 pm

    If Johnny Depp had said to himself “I should never marry this twenty-something, psychologically, and sexually questionable actress,” then he might be in a much better situation today.

  7. jolly green
    May 31st, 2016 @ 3:48 pm

    Dude, “shaming language”? ???? I think you’re a feminist!

  8. Rhino ?
    May 31st, 2016 @ 4:46 pm

    Kinda plain, not ugly or anything, but just meh.

  9. Rhino ?
    May 31st, 2016 @ 6:10 pm

    I’ve seen way more attractive porn stars. If she did porn it would only be particularly popular because she was already famous.

  10. Fail Burton
    May 31st, 2016 @ 6:29 pm

    He married a female version of Ed Wood. Hollywood failure, sexually confused.

  11. Finrod Felagund
    May 31st, 2016 @ 10:24 pm

    Statistics explains the attitude of lesbians towards women bisexuals: women bisexuals outnumber lesbians about 2 to 1, so lesbians are threatened by that, pure and simple. Gay men aren’t threatened by male bisexuals because there the ratio is 2 to 1 the other way.

  12. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 10:10 am

    Where I used to work in Ohio, they put 5 women in the same office. One had been divorced before I got there, and the others were all happily married. One year later, the 4 that had been happily married were all divorced from the bums.
    It isn’t a good idea for married women to hang around bitter divorcees.

  13. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 10:12 am

    based just on divorce statistics, women file about 75% of all divorces. men file about 20% in self defense against some harpy that makes life unbearable. The other 5% are the guys that become smitten by their secretary, and that sort of thing.

    Men don’t like divorce, generally, as it is against what men normally stand for.

  14. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 10:20 am

    There is a certain excitement about “stable.” Being able to take each other for granted (in a good way), knowing that hurts can be smoothed over, and the good times that come in life are shared with a person that you love and are committed to is one of the very finest things in life.
    OTOH, if you find yourself married to someone that sees themselves as the center of the universe, and that you should agree, then you are headed for the graveyard of marriages. How long you’ve been married, under those conditions, won’t matter. Once half of the couple loses sight of what it is all about, the marriage begins to wither.

  15. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 10:20 am

    If he knew that about her going in, there is nothing that can be said in his favor. He’s just as broken as she is.

  16. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 10:22 am

    Stacy, you misspelled “Pentecostal.”

  17. jolly green
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:00 pm

    Like most men that get involved with women line that, he completely underestimated the situation, and I’m sure on some level he assumed his wealth, and position, especially in comparison to hers, would shield him. She turned out to be a lot more independent than he anticipated.

  18. Steve Skubinna
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:19 pm

    Long after I realized my marriage was a mistake, I wouldn’t even contemplate divorce. I believed (and still do) that not every mistake can be walked away from.

    So when she filed, it was both a relief and a blow. Talk about mixed feelings!

    BTW, she send me the papers while I was forward deployed, in Subic Bay of all places. I did not, however, act out in the way many would have suggested was appropriate…

  19. Steve Skubinna
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:21 pm

    Problem with that is you have no way of knowing when those two times are.

  20. Steve Skubinna
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:22 pm

    I knew a lot of marriages that survived twenty years in and broke up within three years of retirement.

  21. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 7:35 pm

    Subic Bay, of all places – had to laugh. Not at you or your circumstances, but the coincidence is simply amusing. I was a LantFlt sailor so didn’t get to the PI, but heard the stories about Olongapo and Angeles. A guy who lived across the street from me when I was in High School had been an MR on a tender tied up in Subic and married a Filipina. She was a real doll.

    I can understand the feelings about the papers. I’ve had to endure a slow divorce over the last 20 years. I had hoped things would change, but it’s simply gotten worse. She tells me about the promise I made. I remind her of hers, but she just blows it off. At present, I’m alone even though she lives in the same house.

  22. get2djnow
    June 2nd, 2016 @ 12:51 am

    I’m okay with Depp getting crushed by the wheel of Karma. He’s a dick.

  23. Glenna Wood
    June 2nd, 2016 @ 1:24 am

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  24. Grampy_Bone
    June 2nd, 2016 @ 1:40 pm

    To be fair, Amber Heard is, or at least was, a hard 10.

    It’s fun to hate on flighty, fickle sluts like her, but she’s not the problem. She didn’t create the world that allowed her to behave this way.

    Take any random girl, give her phenomenal natural beauty, remove all constraints on her behavior, encourage her to follow her every whim and impulse, and you’ll get an Amber Heard every time. Borderline Personality Disorder is just a pseudoscience term for what should be called American Spoiled Entitled Brat Syndrome.

    She’s also part of a multi-generational experiment to feminize men and masculinize women. With so many pussy dudes running around, should we be surprised women are turning to other women to find someone who is actually dominant and assertive?

  25. robertstacymccain
    June 3rd, 2016 @ 12:38 pm

    “To be fair, Amber Heard is, or at least was, a hard 10.”

    Look, I don’t care if she was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, she’s crazy, wacko, demented, deranged, off her rocker, a few fries short of a Happy Meal and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

    The question is not whether Amber Heard is visually appealing, but whether she is emotionally stable enough to be a wife. Obviously, the answer to that question is no, and Johnny Depp is lucky he got out of that marriage alive. Plenty of guys who marry crazy women end up getting murdered by their wives or by their wives’ boyfriends. Scarcely a month goes by that you don’t see a news story about a woman getting arrested when she tries to hire a hit man to kill her husband and ends up talking to an undercover detective posing as a murder-for-hire thug. Considering the large number of women who get caught for murder or attempted murder of their husbands, you’ve got to figure a large number of them get away with it, so the question a guy has to ask is: “Is this woman the kind of crazy evil bitch who would murder me?” Beware of women like Amber Heard.

  26. Grampy_Bone
    June 3rd, 2016 @ 2:03 pm

    True enough, but you know that society not only encourages women to act as selfishly and destructively as possible, it instructs men that judging women for their behavior or having any kind of standards at all is sexist misogyny. Teaching boys to scrutinize women for character flaws–to suggest that a woman can even have character flaws–is a cardinal sin for which there is no absolution.

  27. Is Amber Heard ‘Duplicitous, Untrustworthy, and Indecisive’? : The Other McCain
    June 3rd, 2016 @ 2:57 pm

    […] week, we reported on the acrimonious split between Johnny Depp and his wife, Amber Heard. “Johnny Depp got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a–hole,” Depp’s […]